


In All Places

by Path



Category: Exalted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-14
Updated: 2011-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-16 23:27:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Path/pseuds/Path
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One Traveller of a Shifting Path thinks that the world is ending, and loses himself in the memories of two lifetimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In All Places

I am alone in my house in Great Forks. The others are out, fighting the horrors beyond the walls, and my expertise is unneeded for the moment. I am afraid. I have had little time to myself for too long, and less time with just Rem and myself, alone together. She fights tirelessly.

I am exhausted, but cannot sleep. I have seen too much of late to relax, too much that will dwell in me and linger in my subconscious. I have banished my armour to the place-between-places, where all my things go when I shift. I don’t want it here- the reminder of the need for it becomes claustrophobic. I remove the rest of my clothes and lie naked on my bed, staring at the ceiling. Rem tells me I brood too much. She is right, but I don’t know how to stop. It feels unfair for the world to end before my quest is completed.

I wonder where in Creation my Solar mate is, the errant Morden Kas- or at least, his reincarnation. He has died too many times. I wish I could have found him and apologized before the dead and the fae had descended on my city. So much left undone.

I invoke a charm and let my memory smooth and sharpen. I close my eyes and let my mind drift. I experience everything over again. It is as instant and insistent as when it first happened. I am all places.

It is Realm Year 748, and I am five years old. My father takes us to a festival. I have never left Great Forks and do not yet know how rare it is to celebrate like this in other cities. I see a woman on a balcony, surveying the crowds. She sees me; she seems to see everyone. I am captivated by her eyes. I watch her, and my father has to pull me down the street. I am scolded for staring rudely, and my oldest sister tells me later that it was Dreamweaver I was watching. When I sleep that night, her eyes follow me.

I am in the same room, eighteen years afterwards. I am pressed against the wall and think I might be sick. My older brother advances on me. He is very drunk, and my father has made him angry. He is much stronger than me, and he has a knife- I see the glint of metal in the darkness. I panic, think to jump from the window. As I look out it to judge the long fall, the clouds part and the moon shines through.

A month later, it is raining in a grove of pine trees. A man with the beak of a finch speaks to me in Old Realm. My arms are held by two others, young, strong, and silent. I am filthy- my clothes are torn, I have no shoes, and my hair is matted. Blood is streaked across my front; it is not mine. It is the first time I have met a Lunar. I am surrounded by beasts, and they tell me I am one of them.

I meet Remia in the same clearing a year after that. She is clad in metal, a suit of orichalcum shining like the sun even in the dank woods of the north-east. She does not speak to me, but when she takes the helmet off, I am stunned. Her hair falls long and golden down her back, and her eyes glow a saturated blue like sapphires. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever met. She is also a Solar. I have learned by now not to call them Anathema.

It is Descending Fire, year 769. I hold our child in my arms. Rem lies in the bed, exhausted, and a nurse has handed me the child- our daughter. She has Rem’s colouring, and I think detachedly that Solar blood would naturally take precedent over Lunar before her eyes catch me and I am lost in wonder. We name her Hope of a New Day without realizing how soon that hope will be needed. Great Forks celebrates her birth.

Almost a year before, I find Morden Kas’ house in Denandsor. We have cleansed the city, and I have found the address in the intact city-planning department. I rush there; it has become common for me to find some sign or memory of our past incarnations wherever I go, and if his house is in good repair, I may understand more of him. He was a genius, I know, and I know my last incarnation, Bone-Feathered Traveller, hated him. His house is perfect, and memories flood my mind.

In 766, my older brother is laughing at me, mocking my weakness. It is not fair. He is Dragon-Blooded, showing signs of his Earth exaltation in his wide-set shoulders and thick muscles, and he is armed. I am mortal, a student at the University, and have never been in a fight. He hates being home, but I think he hates the Isle too. He is a lost egg, and I have heard of the brutalities of Pasiap’s Stair. My father and he fought loudly in the hallway before he went out with his Dynast friends, and they did not come back with him. He is full of anger, and he will take it out on me.

Rem corners me in the warstrider workshop in a Lookshyan base, months after we meet. I am shy, and she pushes me onto the bench and demands to know if I want her. I have tried to hold out as long as I can, as I am afraid if our relationship falls apart, she won’t want to travel with me further. The sun is setting behind her as she leans down and meets my eyes. She is a golden goddess. Her perfection breaks me, and jade dust floats around us as we kiss in the workshop.

I am here in my room and the house is empty. I begin to touch myself, stroking fingers along bare skin. I am shivering and sensitive, gone too long without some sort of reassurance or affection. My mind is soaring and apart from my body and the sensation is euphoric. The world outside is dying and dirty and I don’t think I have much time left. My mind pauses here for a long second as my hand brushes against my cock, hardened, and I suck a breath in through gritted teeth before my thoughts burst away from my control and take me elsewhere.

It is spring in 768. I am face-down in the dirt and surrounded by spears. Mortal guards handcuff me and pull me before a woman. She is furious, nearly spitting as she speaks. She is the Perfect’s representative. I have turned myself in for the theft of a hearthstone, one to help complete Remia’s suit. Scarlet Whisper hates me already. I fear what the Perfect will do with me.

I stand before a mirror. I am different, stocky, with rounder glasses and fantastic clothing. It is the First Age, a memory I dreamed one night. I am Bone-Feather again, very young, and I give the mirror a satisfied grin. As I turn, Kas is there, resplendent in orichalcum armour and a long cape. He grimaces- he hates dressing up. I laugh and joke that if he’s lucky, he won’t wear it for long. He affects a straight face and derides my base nature, and we walk away poking fun at each other good-naturedly.

The moon blinds me. Silver is everywhere. I hear a shout, and something speeds towards me. I throw my arms up- there is a brilliant flash and I am changing, thick feathers sprouting down my arms. I move, dodge the blow, incredibly fast, and am lashing out in return. I cannot see. Blows rain against my chest and arms, but I am another being entirely now, faster than any mortal. I cannot avoid a few hits, but they glance off my feathers and the talons my hands have become. I snarl at the brilliant light and whip off attacks with my new and impossible strength.

Kas is laughing at Bone-Feather. I listen to him talk, a recording I found in his house in Denandsor, and it becomes evident that the friendship did not die from Bone-Feather’s efforts alone. Through the recordings, Kas becomes distant, cold, dismissive. I know what happens next, having puzzled out their story. With fragmented memories, I learn how Kas is tainted, how Bone-Feather laughs at his death. I know that his next incarnation is beautiful, a musician and a scholar. I see the recording of his suicide. It is Bone-Feather’s fault. It is my fault.

The Perfect takes my memories. He is something not-human, and he inserts a strand of soulsteel up my spine, into my brain. He rifles through my memories as he wishes, and learns everything about me. He is immensely powerful and I am fascinated. He is an automaton with a human’s soul, and the concept pulls at me. And so I let him take what he will of my thoughts and memories. I am on my knees before him. It is horrifying, but it is oddly erotic. I dream later of him stripping away everything I have and pushing me to my knees again. I wonder what he will think when he takes the memory of that dream.

Two weeks before now, I am caught in a prison underground in Nexus. The Emissary stands before me, threatening a friend of mine. He kills mortals in the other cells with a gesture. My friend tries to convince him to let us go, and begins vomiting shadowlands. It is the most frightening thing I have ever experienced. The Emissary leaves us with a laugh and a quip, and I realize with horror that I have heard the line before. I meet Bone-Feather’s ghost. He is made of easy talk and brilliance and virulent hatred. I talk to him for hours before he lets my friend go.

Rem and I are fucking madly on a tiny bed in the back of the Lookshyan workshop. She rides me, hands woven in mine, and she glows golden and perfect. It is unimaginably good. I thrust into her and close my eyes, losing myself in the spiralling sensations. She presses her body against me and her lips move on mine as if I were the only source of air in the world.

My mentor tells me the person I was is dead. I am naked, standing before him, and very uncomfortable. He is tattooing me. I refused them at the start, not understanding the necessity, but he explained patiently. I am afraid of the Wyld. I have studied it for years at the University. I know how it warps people, and now I learn that the Lunar Exalted are even more susceptible to the horrors. He tells me of the chimera, and pricks my skin with needles dipped in moonsilver. I wish I had never exalted.

On my bed in this instant, my hand is wrapped around my shaft, which I am stroking. I am a thousand places at once and yet tied inextricably to my body. Desire without a target flows through me.

The blows stop coming, and the light begins to fade. My hands are not my own, claws crowning the ends. They are wet and red. The moon has vanished behind the clouds once more, and I am the only source of light. I illuminate a blood-spattered room, and a body, great holes torn through the chest. It takes me moments to remember where I am. I see my reflection in the window. I have turned to an enormous beast, all horrid wings and claws, and am blood-soaked. I rush from my house in the night and somehow get out of the city. Dathis is the first being I have killed.

I stand in Kas’ house in Denandsor, and tears run down my face. Bits of glass and metal and golden pipes surround me, moving and shimmering. Unearthly music plays. It is my music, the music of my essence. There is nothing so beautiful. That poor, short-lived incarnation made this. I must never have stepped in this room in the First Age, for I cannot comprehend how one could kill after hearing this music. I visit every day afterwards, and listen until I weep.

I am kneeling on my bed, one hand against the wall, the other pumping madly. My mind is flashing images too fast. _Morden Kas laughs in triumph – my mentor writes “One Traveller of a Shifting Path” along my shoulders – I flee through the forests outside Great Forks with my brother’s blood on my hands – the Perfect’s hand is on my neck – I summon Munaxes, the Ravine of Whispers, and watch towers fall into her – Rem shakes her hair out and I watch, entranced – Bone-Feather snarls at me when I tell him Kas is out of his reach – I invoke my Insight in the caves below Paragon, and feel my mind leap forward – I am surrounded by music – Kas. Kas, where are you? Kas–_

“Kas...” I shudder and finish, my mind abruptly freezing. The world, revolving too fast to watch, stops without slowing. My body shakes, endorphins racing through me. I let myself fall back to the bed, my too-clear mind suddenly fuzzy. Waves of shivering sensation flow up me, and I can’t feel my fingers and toes. After months of suspense and horrors, pure passion and consciousness is bliss. I lie there, breathing deeply, openly, for time I don’t bother to track.

Eventually, I rise. I clothe myself, pull my armour back from Elsewhere. I stand at the window, and send out the vision my suit provides. I see past the walls, past the fighting, past the vast armies of the dead. In the far distance, I can see the Walker’s Realm. He is on the battlefield, commanding legions of ghosts, and his towers lie empty. I think on the waves of images, and the one that is not a memory.

It is fall of year 769, and I have not yet summoned Munaxes.

**Author's Note:**

> One Traveller of a Shifting Path is my signature No Moon Lunar, a raven-totem I've played for years. He is obsessed with his last incarnation, Bone-Feathered Traveller, and has dedicated his life to tracking down all signs of him and his Solar mate at the time, the Twilight Morden Kas. Later he met Bone-Feather's ghost, a deathlord, in person, and got fairly traumatized by the experience.  
> This was based on Dr. Manhattan's speech in Watchmen, except I guess if he was a Lunar. And masturbating.


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